My personal goal is to ensure that all Future CPM(s) never have to suffer from inactive/nonproductive members. That has been the 'downfall' of the Eve CSM in my eyes. They've always had to put up with 'useless' members, and I am doing my best to ensure that future councils for dust are 100% active (For better or worse) In my eyes, one of the reasons it's been so hard for the EVE CSM to gain traction and taken them years to do so, is because none of them had 100% member contribution. Internal strife and popularity contests won out over the usefulness of the councils as a whole, and the CSM became 'something that's where when things go wrong' as opposed to a useful tool throughout the cycle. This has only recently truly started to change, and even then.. much slower than it could have


CPM0 has already shown the benefits of having a 100% active member base. While many issues are hotly contested, every side of them is covered and debated, and solutions/compromises in most cases that everyone can agree on are reached. CCP is given proper response from a solidified (or split, but clarified) stance in a timely fashion, without having to wait to see if an inactive member is going to contribute.

I am very wary of the CPM becoming more about politics and who is on the council, than what the council is doing (And in turn, having those politics interfere with what the council does). I don't believe that CPM should be a prestigous position that people can seek just because they want the 'perks'. In my mind, people who aren't going to pull their weight and just want public recognition of their popularity can stick to farming like threads in the locker room. The only people who should be eligible for this position are people who've put the work in and can back up that claim to prove they will keep putting the work in.

To this end, I am highly opposed to completely free, unscreened elections.

Putting the obvious issues with determining how to handle voting aside; I believe elections where anyone who puts their name forth is eligible for the seat is an EXTREMELY bad idea. An election of any kind turns the CPM into a political entity, and comdemns them to all the horrors that go with that. CCP should endeavour to keep politics as far as possible from the CPM. The institution can only suffer, otherwise.

"Democracy only makes sense when the voters are responsible and informed"- Not to insult our community.. but the vast majority do not fit that description.


I am not fond of the idea of elections in general, and would vastly prefer it if CCP was responsible for selecting the CPM for all future councils. (With proper guidance from ISD and other 'trusted' sources for screening candidates. This part is essential to avoiding claims of "CCP Playing favorites") While not completely ideal, it ensures that the council will be filled with players who have proven the willingness and initiative to improve the game.


If voting is absolutely necessary, I feel that CCP would be irresponsible to allow simply anyone to be a candidate. Similar to above, I would prefer that CCP chose a list of possible candidates. (Properly screened as mentioned in the previous paragraph) This list of candidates could then be voted by the players to decide who will be on the council. (No campaign process should be allowed. CCP Should take every step possible to remove politics from the CPM as much as can be done)


In addition, to expand on the earlier point of 'ensuring activity':

I feel it is absolutely necessary for CCP (at their discretion, not the CPM's) to be able to painlessly remove someone from the position and replace them. The issue has come up with the CSM multiple times, and CCP has often spoke of concerns surrounding a 'revolving door' process, and "not wanting to look like they are playing tyrant". Those are valid concerns, but they are minor PR feathers that can be smoothed when ruffled, compared to the damage done by someone who is unwilling or unable to contribute on a regular basis.

I understand that sometimes real life sneaks up on us all, but if someone is legitimately too busy to engage in CPM activities, stepping down to give the spot to someone who can put the work in during the meantime is advised. (We're talking like 4+ weeks to months, not forcing someone to step down because they are gone for a week. Stepping down might not be appropriate in all cases. Bringing alternates in as temps in "AFK" situations might be more viable. Make it a case-by-case thing.)


Now, the concept of 'removal' becomes a serious issue if player elections are a thing. "Votes that didn't matter" has induced some rage in the past, but the damage becomes minimal to nonexistant if CCP are the ones doing the selection in the first place, and a replacement is quickly had so that the council itself is not short-handed for the rest of their term.

In closing:

I do not feel that a popularity contest (IE: Elections) are the best way to ensure a productive and active council. The CPM is not a privilege owed to those with the most spacefriends. Someone being popular is not a assurance of competence.

People would undoubtedly be upset at 'not having the freedom to choose' but I would honestly prefer people be upset with CCP for choosing a council that 100% active and productive, than have the players be happy and choose a council that is 40-60% active and not as productive as a result.

When it comes to the lesser of two evils, I trust CCP more than I trust the community to know who's actually been putting in the legwork. The screening process 'should' then remove most of the brownnosers and leave us with a list of mostly legit candidates.


Someone doesn't need to choose their representative to be represented by them. The burden then becomes on the CPM to show the players that even if they were not 'elected' by the community, they have their interests at heart and interact with them on a regular basis.

An election and 'player chosen representation' are amazing PR for CCP, but the CSM has paid the price for it in the past. While there's no dispute that the players have chosen excellent CSM members in the past, they have never chosen a fully active council, and there's always been people who've been 'just there'. If CCP wants to take the CPM seriously as a feedback and/or oversight entity, politics and PR simply cannot be involved. IMO, Feedback and PR are mutually exclusive, and you can't provide one without compromising the other.

If CCP honestly just wants the CPM to give players the vague illusion of their opinions affecting the game on a grand scale... Sure. Let's have elections. But if CCP wants to have the CPM be a critical part of their development process... It's absolutely essentially that none of the members are 'dead weight' (Why have a council at all, if people on it aren't going to contribute?)


Just my thoughts on it.

-Nova Knife

I'm not sure I understand this point. Why would players who were voted in (because of popularity) be less effective than people chosen for prior contributions? Sure, there's going to be some good people who get voted in, like I said. But the vast majority of the playerbase does not participate on the forums. They don't watch youtube videos, or listen to podcasts. They just play the game, and when they leave their PS3, they're done with dust until they get back. This will cause an even worse 'bloc vote' syndrome than we put up with in eve. The majority of players will vote for whoever they're /told/ to vote for, not because they know or trust any of the candidates or what they do or have done.

That being said... Why? Why is it so important that players choose? In my mind, if CCP legitimately wants feedback on their next build(s) on the immediate roadmap, I'd rather see them pick people who can directly provide feedback to that. Consider the Eve CSM. What would be the point of players electing 3-4 Wormhole guys, if the entire next expansion is dedicated to FW, etc? While those 3-4 guys might contribute... They're not ideal picks. Even if they talk to 'experts' to give them advice, CCP would've been much better served if they had 3-4 FW guys instread. See what I'm getting at?

In my mind, you have the screening/veto process backwards. CCP needs to pick the candidates, and the players need to veto them. This needs to be in the form of ISD or other 'trusted' players, or you'll just have zerg blocs saying "no to X because i don't like them" regardless of how good a candidate they'd be. Again, this brings us back to the perils of Politics.


Personally, I think the whole idea of the CPM as the players (and probably CCP) expect it to be formed and processed, is a flawed, unrealistic, and impractical beast. A 12-14 (or less) person council is not the way to go. Elections are not the way to go. There are a bunch of people who stand out as 'experts' in certain fields, on the forums. I don't think a public council is necessary for CCP to get feedback from these groups of people.

I'd honestly prefer this kind of stuff to be an ISD Team with several subgroups instead. With proper logistics, it'd be much more ideal. The general anonymity (mostly) prevents any sort of e-peen/political agenda. ISD all are given NDAs to sign already, so giving them the skinny on upcoming plans/features that affect their relevant group, is no big deal. This also means that if say, CCP wants to iterate on Vehicles/AV, they can just set up a meeting with the specific guys on this ISD thing who deal with vehicles/AV, and not get any garbage feedback from other guys in the feedback group who've never touched either.

Giving CCP a means for their devlopers to communicate with the players who can help them most is pretty much the entire goal of this 'CPM thing' anyways. The real question is : Do we really need a political entity of a few people to do this, when we could get a much better result, from a larger, organized group with several subgroups?

I don't think anyone could use platforms like they do in Eve. Being a " Caldari assault guy" or a "HMG guy" doesn't really hold the same clout as "WH guy" or "Nullsec guy" in eve does. There's a huge distinction between the two. And honestly? The last thing I want to see is a group of self proclaimed 'experts' who only care about once facet of the game trying to railroad CCP into making their personal play style the best thing in dust. You want people who will represent the greater interests, not ones who will represent the specific. Those who care about the game as a whole will go to bat for anything that needs support. Those who care about /their/ part of the game, will generally be blind to all others.


Personally, I don't give a damn if players trust or like the people giving feedback... as long as it's good feedback. A wise man once said to me "Being on the CSM isn't about how you support and communicate with the people who voted you in.... It's about how you support and communicate with the ones who didn't."

There is basically only four options when it comes to voting:

1) Free, unrestricted voting for anyone who has an account.

• This is going to be abused as hell, and will allow individuals desparate enough to basically control who gets on the council. Obviously not ideal in any way.


2) Pay to vote. Eve players pay a sub to 'earn' vote, this is no different. People can vote as many times as they have subbed accounts, so each vote is a source of revenue for CCP, and serves as an artificial barrier towards rigging.


• People can still 'rig' the vote, but having a cost tied to it means there's less incentive to stuff the ballot en masse.
• The major downside to this is the 'freebie gamer' gets no say.

3) Free voting, based on ingame activity metrics


• Everyone gets a say
• Basically the same as option 1: Easily rigged en masse, as the barrier for entry would mean anyone wanting to stuff the ballots would just need to play for a few hours a day, maybe a couple days per week on each account. (Any more and CCP risks 'giving no say' to the super casual weekend warriors or 12 hour shift workers)
• Would stop any sort of mass voting script (But then, all voting should be done ingame if at all, so this point would ideally be moot)

4) No voting at all. Players accept that an elected council serves as little more than a PR stunt, and push for a more legitimized, properly used feedback entity.


• Completely avoids all of the nightmare about how to make sure elections are 'fair'
• Provides CCP with a more rounded source for feedback based on what they actually need feedback on at the time (No sending a bunch of logistic dudes to summits if the entire dev cycle for that time period is devoted to vehicles, etc)
• Almost completely removes the drama, ego, and politics from the feedback cycle, which have no place there to begin with.

None of these options are going to be universally liked, and they're all messy, ugly options that will leave some people pissed no matter what CCP does. The sad fact is : Having any sort of 'fair', unabusable voting system for something like this is basically a pipe dream for a free-to-play game. Most of the measures CCP would have to take to restrict rigging would end up harming legitimate voters, and are almost all easily bypassed by people with the know-how and willingness.

IMO, People need to stop pushing for a system that isn't ideal in the first place and open their minds to a better way.